Skyward
by Nerumi H
Summary: Friends or lovers, they link fingers in a world where no one can touch them. But as with Peter and Wendy, there always comes the time to grow up.


.title.: **Skyward**

.summary.: **Friends or lovers, they link fingers in a world where no one can touch them. But as with Peter and Wendy, there always comes the time to grow up.**

.characters.: **VY2 Yuuma/Gumi**

.warnings.: **None.**

.cover art by.: **桜伊 (Pixiv ID: 1219160)**

.a/n.:** Hey! I have found a new love for this couple. I'm still trying to work out how to write them the way that I like and that is appealing, so expect more of them from me.**

**EDIT 03/01/13: Fixed up Yuuma's garbled dialogue. Yep.**

**X**

She was a tiny girl, she was a lithe girl. She was made of the sky in the morning, and the firecrackers of July. She was spunk and she was loud, she was living in her imagination's fairytale where she was the hero instead of the princess.

She proved to him the years before that she could run forever in rain or in shine, and that she could sing in a strong violin voice to any tune that was handed to her. Dancing and climbing and racing and laughing were pieces of what she was made of.

Climbing.

Today she is young and short brittle-looking limbs, perched high in a tree, having scurried up there like a cat with her zest as her claws. Gumi grins down at him, her happiness almost able to be tasted on his tongue, and if it could it would be sparkling peach.

He reclines near the bottom between two heavy secure branches, awkward long limbs that have grown faster than his muscles could follow are slung lazily over the wood into the air. His feet, oversized and narrow with adolescence, swing slowly back and forth in the air. "Y'seein' the world from up there, kid?"

"I'm not a kid!" she cries back through the leaves and a grin.

He trades the expression back, and leans backwards over the thick branches. "'course not."

They are now living in a world—call it perfect, as they do. The air is crystal smooth and you never run out of breath as you race and laugh, the books sing and cry and speak their stories and sparkle their lyrical galaxies under your fingertips. You can do anything you put your mind to. A Neverland, where the fairies and mermaids are in the hills and sandboxes surrounding them. Never grow up.

There are no other people, there is only them, and so no one is around to lie and cheat and betray.

She turns her face to the clouds, so far above him and in her mind, so far from the world. Free. "Roro?"

She has always shown him this world. He has learned to crave it.

"Mmn?"

"If I fall, will you catch me?"

She is eleven and he is fifteen, and all it means now is literal. Glancing up at her from under heavy eyelids he hardly even calculates his own strength and her size, for they can both do anything in their mismatched foreign world.

He is not scared for her.

"No doubt."

**X x X**

Today he is famous. Today she is still a freak.

They are starting and ending the years of teenagers, he seventeen to her thirteen. If she does not show it with the bizarre exclamations, the ecstatic expression in her eyes as she begins new otherworldly projects that her parents don't believe will ever work but Yuuma encourages her to complete, then the sight of the two of them joined at the hip, such opposites in a planet now seeming to be only reigned by popularity status, laughing with the same jokes and the same antics, will show you they are still in their private world.

Now he shows the girl his new vehicle, it's small and gleaming, compact white metal that she calls a Transformer; he chuckles with her. Their blue and gold eyes spark energy together when he asks her if she'd like a ride in it.

The way she springs right for the handle is a sure indication that she agrees. He steps around her to the other side, finally on feet that match and legs he doesn't trip while using. He's taller than any other boy in the school, but maybe that's what gets him noticed. The fawning that the other students place on him is confusing in his opinion. "Ditch the four-eyed freak and come with us, Yuuma," is all he hears in the hallways when he doesn't have Gumi to lead him back into their secluded own earth.

There, the hierarchy doesn't exist; the gossip and the growing into your skin all wrong and the _awkward_ first bra shopping and education stress and pain.

He slips into the car soon after her, their doors shutting with hard bangs that echo on the block. The streets are completely empty, as if (or, for certain) everyone had moved their cars into garages once they'd heard a teenage boy had gotten a vehicle.

In their world...

The engine snarls, a beast, and as he presses on the gas the sound becomes a _god's_ beast. Hellhound. Gumi gives him a feisty, animal grin. Excited? Of course, duh! Away, Yuuma-mobile!

"Maybe someday, it'll be the Gumi-mobile."

"Huh?" Her hands, pressed on the windshield, almost feel the shock of evergreen trees, the cold and plastic and metal of houses streaking past.

"When y'can drive, I might have another."

"Spoiled! And I'll take it only if this one doesn't suck."

"Suckin' so far?"

"Nope!" She pauses. "And only if I can learn to drive."

"Y'can learn anything."

She leans her head out the window, her feet tucked underneath herself on the seat. Her green hair whips back, and he glances at her, where she looks like a nymph, a body created of things too divine to be human. Eyes stealing glory from the noon-day sky with their beauty and everlasting presence, while she would say his were boasting more power and warmth than the sun.

It is them that light this world and gaze over it, control the clouds and the silver rain.

"Roro, stop! Stop!"

Yuuma quickly does just that, veering to the shoulder of the road. Even as the wheels are still rolling, though, she pushes open the door and leaps out. He hears her exclaim, muffled as the door closes, "Land ahoy! Hands on deck!"

Confused, the emotion only translating to his face with a quirked pink eyebrow, he leans out his own window to see her.

But suddenly she is on the windshield, scrambling with an ease unlike any girl so small and awkward (but of course it was natural, she had spent so much of her life chasing to reach the stars) to the top of the car. When her foot disappears over his head, he can hear her shout, "Go! Away!"

And he sits at the wheel, holding it as the motor purrs a dark leopard's purr at his feet. He hears her sit up there, shift, sit again. He sees her in his mind with crossed legs and a spirit vibrant as fire, potent as diamonds, and a hand pointing down the house-lined street.

He edges the gas pedal down, a trapdoor to whatever she wanted because she never got what she wanted from anyone so he had to give her it all.

And he is not scared for her.

For they control their lives in their world too.

She screams, hollers, cheers, as the car builds speed and she has to lay against the hood to stay afloat. Fingers clasp on the bars meant for holding suitcases and biked on top. Her goggles cover her eyes, huge as they are with curiosity and life, and she imagines she is flying with him.

After only minutes but what she takes as a whole new lifetime where she had wings, he offers to help her off. But she hangs her head and shoulders off the back of the car and looks at him with those soft eyes, "If I stumble, will you steady me?"

"Ev'ry time."

**X x X**

Her invitations were often wacky.

Meet her on the top of her house at 4, call her from the payphone outside the pizza place that smells like pepper at 6 for she will be there. Bring an empty pop can, bring a belt of stakes and holy water, come to the alley behind the doctor's office at 10 am and bring a flashlight.

This one was strangely normal.

_Meet me at the bridge over the river so I can kiss you! _Lime green notepaper shoved under his door with nimble fingers.

Easy as that, and he arrives there with his hair shorter than was usual and a green t-shirt for this summer day and an anxiousness that was numb in his strong reclined nature.

Strange for her to phrase the note in such a way?

Not really.

**She is a tiny girl, she is a lithe girl, and she is a blunt and zesty and amazing girl.**

Gumi shows up with her hair fastened away from her forehead with her red-glass goggles, a black tank top that clings to her back with heat from the both the sun and her body—surely she ran here. A gauzy skirt, blue shorts that don't match underneath. Her shoes look heavy-dangerous.

"Hey!" she greets as usual, "Roro!"

He has grown out of talking, it seems, over the years. Yuuma smiles for her as a 'yo, l'il one.'

Her hand encloses his wrist and with it, she frees him from the drabness of the world, all of a sudden the water rushing beneath them is serene and morphing, the concrete is cold against the burning sun and perfection is what he feels is breathing once more. And everyone who has ever walked here is echoing. Who they were, where they were going, where they came from, but none of them able to tell the future or the past like Gumi and Yuuma can now.

He knows—in the future she does not have a death, the sky is forever.

"I sent in my letter to the president this morning," she announces, her fingers slipping from his wrist, softest side of her fingertips dragging enough to tickle on the back of his palm. Her shoved-back fringe sticks up on her head behind the goggles she has always had (glass is scratched and cracked with adventure) so he smoothes it down.

As he does this and she begins to pull him along the bridge, he tries to peer deeper into her future and see if there is the bullying there, and the parents that forget to come home, and the grades sinking lower than her toes.

But no, it's foggy, for although he loves it and sometimes even needs it, he is the only one of them who knows there is a necessary real world under the one they share. One where real things happen.

Gumi grabs onto the narrow railing of the bridge, thoughtlessly as usual; pulls herself atop it.

The silver water, so far away its waves are mute, pushes her away from it. Her balance is alarming, an acrobat's, flawless and as steady as stars hang in galaxies.

She walks alongside him, her head almost level with his—it is higher.

"D'y' think he'll reply?" Yuuma asks.

Her face illuminates. "He's gotta! I mean, I told him important stuff!"

"Mmh, aliens sure are important."

"_Yeah!_" she agrees animatedly, nodding. The railing is the width of her foot yet she does not wobble. A perfect, quickly spinning, light-radiating top. "He doesn't have much time, so he better start writing a treaty letter as soon as he can!"

His hand trails behind her heels, lightly, gathering the echoing and past and future of her in his hand. Suddenly, he is concerned. He needs to know where his girl is going.

Try to discover what her life will become, what life she will have.

"If I was him, I'd've even started makin' gifts for 'em. So if th' letter ain't working he can move on to th' whole pleading and grovellin' deal."

"'Don't steal our planet, mister Martian!'" Gumi imitates a voice, twisting fast on the railing to face Yuuma. She skips backwards—to anyone it looks like a stumble pulling her to demise in the rushing river.

But he is never scared for her.

Through his fingers he feels her past, where they first met out in the park, the place he took his little sister when their mother was tired of dealing with her. And he was ten and he tried to coax her off the slide, Mizki, Mizki c'mon, where she was petrified in fear of heights. Then a green-haired little sprite shows up behind her and sits beside her and holds her hand and does the reassuring grin that later helped Yuuma gain the confidence to meet the first and last time he was rejected.

And Mizki and Gumi slid down together and they played with each other the rest of the day while Yuuma overlooked.

He now sees and feels where somehow Gumi took a liking to the older brother, and they grew together while he began to see she was strong and unique and no longer alone and beautiful and quirky.

He wonders if in the footsteps of his own future will his friendship for her give way to love?

"Yuuma!"

"Hm?"

"You're in a daze!"

He lets the echoes leave his hand. "An' y'snapped me outta it."

She asks, "If I'm in danger, will you save me?"

"Ev'ry way I can."

She leans from the waist, cups his thin face in her hands, and kisses him sweet and sparks.

What life will she have in the future he cannot read?

A life with him.

**X x X**

"I'm jeaaaalouus!" she sings with her eyes swallowing up the interior of the condo. "Rich boy got the jackpot!"

He smirks, perhaps it is more a half-smile, and glides after her with long stroking strides. She rushes at every corner, edge, all the floor-space covered with the footsteps of her little curved feet.

"Screw bitches get money," Gumi trills slyly, mischievous, glancing his way. He brushes her hair away from her eyes, all his gestures sluggish and steady as always. Calm, distant in all ways except heart.

"Who taught y'that language," he says slowly, and she is the only one who can tell he is joking.

"At least I toned it down!" she whines, still with that grin. Then she catches sight of the balcony, and races to it. He follows her, watching after her—a body that thinks it knows very well how to take care of itself, but truly doesn't. At least not in the real world.

There isn't much he can ask, or wander upon, for he knows everything she does. Everything she thinks. He's too old for silly games now, games about realms and planets where she can sing forever and people don't shove her in the halls and sneer insults about her hair or antics or invisible family and he isn't being pressured into universities he's nervous he'll fail in and people don't kiss the ground he treads on even though he's never even talked to them and he doesn't get cold clammy palms when he has to talk in public (a pretty face seems to have gotten him far, as all pretty faces will).

He's too old for silly games...but every time he wants to tackle real life things like his sister's dumb decisions and how he really isn't financially alright to be in this house or that university, he remembers how she won't let him. She doesn't let him with only a little grin and an exclamation about aliens or whatever, because he knows she loves it here, and she can't have it without him.

He gives her all she needs because he's the only one there for her...

Her kisses are still warm on his lips and cheeks collected from two years since she kissed him on the bridge, but it's still friendship at the base of it all.

Can't friendship still survive if they both grow up a little?

Gumi now climbs atop the balcony rail, her balanced challenged again and again she wins the competition with gravity. She has to fly to live, they all know. If he held her hand maybe she'd throw herself off the top of the building.

He stands by her. They both overlook the flurry of the city below, crawling and streaking below, the top of a building hundreds of meters from the ground. A breeze is stroking over their heads.

"Ever get a reply t'your letter?"

"Nope."

"...it'll bite 'em in th'butt eventually."

"Definitely. We're gonna be the only ones prepared!" She hits her fist into the opposite palm. "We have to start putting up banners! And blimps!"

A loose chuckle leaves his lips, and he leans forwards on his elbows to the railing. The superhero girl is beside him, when hasn't she been, he is practically fabricated of her and she of him. So dangerous and both so carefree in their hearts.

If any part of her is slipping away from him, it's the carefree part.

She extends her arms now, open to the wind.

"Yo!" she exclaims.

"Yeah?"

Her eyes, the sky of forever, listening and observing and absent of ghost-like clouds, only everlasting and huge palette of discovery and welcoming space for the sun—her eyes slide shut to the city. It races, all harsh metals and harsher people where lies and cruel tricks-trades are a daily meal that Yuuma and Gumi are allergic to. They have tried to never leave their spot, to avoid this being forced down their throats. A safe world, an opposite. A secretless world. The sun and sky who played out also the moon and the stars and the plants and the water and _there_ _is no __**gravity.**_

Time to hit the ground.

"If I am dead, will you revive me?"

It looks to him as if she is tilting.

He does not answer, once upon a time the answer would be an automatic 'yes.' Once upon a time she made fairytales and he sang them with her.

"If I leave, what'll happen?" he asks.

He knows her so well, every inch of her. He can see when her blood pulses and when it silences. A beat now skips.

"Everything will go dark." Gumi reaches a hand out into the abyss before her. One punctuated to other ears by car horns and tire squeals and a din of chatter, but to her it is of complete rainbow silence. "It'll miss the sunny speech-impediment silent super-Yuuma with the bubblegum hair and that Batman cape he has in his closet since elementary that he _still_hasn't shown me."

"Then..." He doesn't sigh, only pauses a long time with words behind his lips that don't want to clear themselves. "D'you wanna leave it with me?"

"Why?" Her face, still an immature type of gorgeous, develops another smile. "That's like throwing a fish out of water, or a—a jungle monkey out of the jungle monkey-land. Silly."

"Time to grow up."

Of course that will not convince her. She is a child and he does not doubt that she will never grow fully out of it. As long as she grows enough to face things though, he'll be happiest. Grow enough that he doesn't have to leave her behind. If an hour is painful enough, what can a lifetime without a Gumi present at his side be like?

And what will the harshness of leaving that world forever be like, unable to return?

He presses on despite the fears. "I can only really save y'out here, now."

Her hand returns to her side as if she could not find what she had been searching for.

"I can only love y' completely out here."

Knocked out of the air—this is when she drops.

He is ready, has been ready since the day on the bridge, and firmly wraps his arms around her torso before she tips too far off the edge. Her hands grasp his wrists anyway she can reach; there is panic in her eyes for she had never felt such an earthly force before. Invisible and high above the world with her Roro, this did not exist.

They may no longer be a sky, but her eyes are just as hypnotizing blue.

He brings her into his chest, breathing in her hair and feeling her heart in her wrists. He holds her as the world becomes too sharp for both of them, too raw.

They may no longer be a sun, but his eyes are just as comfortably warm.

She calms in his arms, trying to keep herself from being blinded and gutted by the world suddenly very alive around her. Nothing feels sure, she has been thrown to another planet that she believes all the wacky stuff about, the aliens and the multiple moons, and she isn't sure how to direct it.

"'m still me," Yuuma says. She turns to face him, still pressed against him. She does not need to ask any more questions. All the answers are there in his skin, his blood, his gaze, that may be sharp and abruptly real, but never has edging blindness felt so safe.

"Y're still you."

"Be ready to catch me for real now."

"Always have."

**X x X**

"Yuuma?"

"Mhm?"

"If I—"

"'d do anythin' for you, y'know that."

"If I asked you if you loved me, would you laugh at me?"

"Yeah."

"What? Meanie! That's not right!"

"'cuz y'should already know th'answer to it."

"...Oh! Well then, I guess I love you too."

**X**

**.a/n.: What the hell was th—**

**Yes, so, first complete and mildly developed YuumaxGumi story! I wrote it all on a very tired afternoon and night...I think I could have done better, but I'm satisfied with it for now.**

**Read and review please~**


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